FTC asks court to hold new drug founder Martin Shkreli for contempt

Mar­tin Shkre­li, aka Pharmabro, launched a new com­pa­ny last year called Drug­like, Inc.

The Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion (FTC) is now hold­ing him in con­tempt for fail­ing to coop­er­ate with the Com­mis­sion’s inves­ti­ga­tion into whether the com­pa­ny’s launch vio­lat­ed his life embar­go. I am ask­ing the judge.

Ear­li­er last year, Judge Den­nis Court imposed a life embar­go on Shkre­li bar­ring him from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal industry.

Cote ruled that a for­mer phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal exec­u­tive orches­trat­ed an ille­gal anti-com­pet­i­tive scheme to gain exclu­sive rights to the life-sav­ing anti­malar­i­al and antipar­a­sitic drug Dalaprim.

After obtain­ing a man­u­fac­tur­ing license for Dalaprim from Tur­ing, the pre­de­ces­sor of Shkre­li, it increased the price from $17.50 to $750 per tablet.

Court sided with the FTC in an antitrust law­suit it filed against Shkre­li in 2020, order­ing it to pay $64.6 mil­lion in dam­ages and impos­ing a life­time ban from the industry.

Ahead of Drug­like’s launch, Shkre­li tried (unsuc­cess­ful­ly) to per­suade a judge to sus­pend the ban, argu­ing that his future con­tri­bu­tions to the indus­try would ben­e­fit the public.

Shkre­li was sen­tenced to sev­en years in 2017 for deceiv­ing investors and chal­lenged the ban while serv­ing a fed­er­al prison sen­tence. He was released in May.

Start­ing in Octo­ber 2022, the FTC began ask­ing Shkre­li to review com­pli­ance reports and relat­ed records, as well as to respond to drag-like interviews.

But the com­pa­ny’s co-founders con­tin­ued to ignore the “repeat­ed requests.” The agency also said Shkre­li had yet to pay any of the $64.6 mil­lion fine. The court is now ask­ing Shkre­li to respond to requests for infor­ma­tion with­in 21 days of the decision.

Drug­like describes itself as the “Web3 drug dis­cov­ery soft­ware plat­form” in its launch press release (PDF).

The com­pa­ny says it will build a “dis­trib­uted com­put­er net­work” to “pro­vide resources for any­one who wants to launch or con­tribute to an ear­ly-stage drug dis­cov­ery project.”

“Drug­like will remove bar­ri­ers to ear­ly-stage drug dis­cov­ery, boost inno­va­tion and allow a wider range of con­trib­u­tors to share rewards,” Shkre­li said in his statement.

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